Blog · Hospitals · 5 min read
Private hospital marketing in Nigeria: department by department
Private hospitals sell maternity, specialist clinics, surgery and health checks to different people. How to market each department and route every enquiry.
By the Kren Agency team ·
Private hospital marketing in Nigeria works when you market each department on its own and route every enquiry to the desk that can book it. A hospital in Lagos or Abuja sells maternity care, specialist clinics, surgery and health checks to different people at different times. Good hospital marketing brings each of them in, then gets them to the right team fast.
Why does one hospital-wide campaign fall flat?
A clinic sells one or two services. A hospital sells twenty. When the marketing talks about "the hospital" in general, nobody feels it is for them.
An expectant mother wants to know who will deliver her baby. An HR manager wants a quote for staff health checks. A patient with chest pain wants the cardiology clinic day. One slogan cannot answer all three.
So plan department by department. Give each one its own message, its own page, its own way to book, and its own number to watch: bookings per month, and where each one came from.
How do you market each department?
Maternity and antenatal care
Families choose where to register for antenatal care early, often after comparing a few hospitals. Show who leads the care, what the antenatal package includes, how many visits it covers and what happens at delivery.
Specialist clinics
Your consultants keep set clinic days. If patients do not know a clinic exists, those hours go unused. Publish each specialist clinic with its consultant, its days and a clear way to book a slot. Promote the clinics with the most empty slots first.
Health checks and surgery consultations
Companies book staff health checks every year, and they go with the hospital that makes it easy to ask, get a quote and schedule. Surgery consultations are planned decisions too. Give both a named contact and a prompt reply.
How should enquiries reach the right department?
This is where hospitals lose the most patients. Calls, forms and messages for every department land on one switchboard. They wait, get transferred twice, or never reach the team that could book them.
- Ask the department first. Every form and enquiry route starts with "Which department?"
- Send each enquiry to one named desk. Maternity enquiries go to the maternity desk, health check requests to the person who quotes companies.
- Acknowledge at once. An instant reply tells the patient their request reached the right team.
- Set a reply time per department.
- Track every enquiry to a booking or a clear no. Unanswered enquiries are the leak you can fix fastest.
- Remind patients before each visit. Our post on reducing patient no-shows covers the wording.
What does a hospital website need?
A page for every department and specialist clinic, consultant profiles, clear emergency details, your HMO list if you accept HMOs, directions, and booking by department. Our post on hospital website design must-haves walks through all ten. The test is simple: can a patient find their department and book it in a few taps on a phone?
How should a hospital show up on Google?
Patients search for the service, not the hospital: "antenatal care in Lekki" or "cardiologist in Wuse". Your Google Business Profile is often the first thing they see.
Google's own rules help hospitals here. Its guidelines say departments within hospitals may have their own Business Profiles, and that the exact name of each department must be different from the main business and from other departments. They also say not to create more than one profile for each location (Google Business Profile Help: Guidelines for representing your business on Google).
- One profile for each hospital site, with the address written exactly as it appears on your website.
- Separate profiles only for public-facing departments that patients contact directly, such as a maternity unit or a diagnostic centre, each with a distinct name.
- Photos of the building, reception and wards, never of patients.
Doctors count as individual practitioners in the same guidelines, which say a practitioner should not have several profiles to cover their specialisations. Our post on Google Business Profile for clinics covers the set-up.
How should a hospital ask for reviews?
Reviews help patients choose between hospitals, and Google is strict about how you get them. Its contribution policy bans reviews posted because of an incentive such as payment, discounts or free services. It also bans discouraging negative reviews or asking only happy patients (Google: Prohibited and restricted content).
So ask every patient the same way, after the visit, with a short link. Ask for each department's profile where it has one. Reply to every review politely, and never confirm that the reviewer was your patient or mention their care. Our post on getting Google reviews for clinics has the wording.
Where Kren fits
Kren is a done-for-you growth partner for private hospitals in Lagos and Abuja. We set up and run your department pages, Google profiles, ads and the follow-up automations that route each enquiry to the right desk. Your own teams handle the final follow-up and confirm every booking.
Questions clinic owners ask about hospital marketing
Should we market every department at once?
Usually not. Start with the department that has the most room to grow, such as maternity or health checks. Prove what works there, then repeat it for the next department.
Can each hospital department have its own Google profile?
Google's guidelines say departments within hospitals may have their own Business Profiles. Each department's exact name must differ from the main hospital and from other departments. Use separate profiles only for departments patients contact directly.
Can we offer patients a discount for a Google review?
No. Google's contribution policy bans reviews posted because of an incentive, including payment, discounts and free services. Ask every patient the same way, with no reward attached.
Who should reply to hospital enquiries?
The department that can book them. A named desk per department, with a set reply time, keeps enquiries from getting lost between the switchboard and the ward.
Want to see which departments are losing enquiries at your hospital? On a 30-minute strategy call, we look at how each department shows up on Google, what happens when someone calls or messages, and where bookings slip away. Show me where my clinic is losing patients →